Woman River is in the tradition of Staggerford and Winesburg Ohio. It interweaves themes of belief, doubt, and commitment to values in traditional and unconventional ways. A young farmer separates from his family as he and his lover come to terms with an out of wedlock pregnancy. The owners of a tavern and grocery store face life without each other. A priest and his housekeeper are challenged by their mutual attraction. A police chief and town drunk face down wartime traumas and a gentle, simple man dies suspiciously.

We listen with an imperfect ear, revelation arrives in silence in the middle of the night. There the void — empty and full, the hollowed self hears the songs of the universe. Listen and pass it on, the writer’s blessing.

A fence next to a dirt road,
weary, grey cedar rails sagging and broken.

An old man walks the fence line, dressed in bibs camouflaged with faded oil stains.
On his head, a tattered straw hat with pink band,
hair long and thick dances in the breeze,
captured in a ponytail tied with twine,
wispy strands escape and dance in the breeze.

He stops, stares at the rails,
lifts the hat off his head – a bald spot shines in the midday sun.
Scratching the bare pate, he stares at the grey, jumbled disarray,
shakes his head and limps down the rail’s jagged course.

He unpins a gate and steps through to the pasture exploding with Canada thistle and milkweed.
Monarchs hover.

In the middle a rock pile,
thrown down in his youth from a hay rack drawn by Billy and Jo.

Sitting on a warm stone in the noonday sun,
he sweeps his head with a blue bandana,
and surveys the air full of life: blue birds, orioles, finches, dragonflies and bees.

Holsteins roamed here – bellowing in complaint about god knows what,
thirsty after the windmill fell, when water stopped its rise to the gray stock tank.

He fidgets with a pocket watch – no gold here – a poor man’s timepiece, engraved,
“John – 1889”.
It remains closed.
He knows the time.

Grasses sway in a green chorus,
and pass on the meandering zephyr to the aspen grove at the field’s edge,
where leaves rattle in the sun.
The bugs give up flight control and drift with the wind, as he does.

Time in woods binds no man.
Breath unlocks a taut heart drawn down the trail.

The forest’s spirit a violin, playing one note. It’s strings sing true.
They pierce and leave a song heard nowhere else,
captured in a veiled day when the slated sky offers one complexion.

The cathedral aisle of a meandering watercourse slides between doting cedar and pine,
spouting vapors skyward in pirouetting mists that fold and bend as they climb,
scattering in tattered tree tops. Abandoned there they wither and waste away.

In this season no technicolor, just an achromatic gift,
conferred by partners in wood high on a hill,
birch, shadowed spruce and gray aspen rise over blue snow on the crest.

The time for silence has gone, everywhere men tread.
And if they are not in sight, the forest sighs in pine boughs
and groans as widow-makers lean against sturdier partners who give solace in the wind.

Sluggish breath overcomes a stumbling core, confined by chemistry’s requirement,
and presses through a restrained heart finding rhythm when exertion teeters near exhaustion,
the line between hounded, bends, exhilaration the harvest.

The track tuned and supple under the cold, white carpet
makes no judgements and draws no conclusions.
It invites kick and glide.

“Every Opportunity is a MARKETING Opportunity!” This is new territory for a senior citizen who has spent most of his life in education and human services. Those engaged in these occupations are focused on the immediacy of the work. Selling oneself is not a priority. Not much marketing gets done.

I wrote a book; Woman River, self-published as many books are these days, since the publishing industry’s take leaves the author with 6% to 8% of the cover price. Seems unfair even with the “overhead” rationalizations of the industry. The whole prospect of getting someone to notice your book even if you go the traditional route is daunting.

Writing a book is a very disciplined process, not taken lightly. A time and place to write have to fit the person, otherwise natural ability and good intention paves the road to aimlessness.

Admittedly, there is a lot of garbage out there. Even if the material is absorbing, many times the editing of the content is not – grammar matters. Having an editor who teaches and kicks your butt insures that you aren’t getting away with sloppy work. It also helps to have the editor or copy reader be a punctuation and grammar Nazi.

Being in business for yourself requires a diverse skill set. You need to know markets, products, public relations, accounting and tax laws if you don’t have an accountant, as well as your community or target audience. None of this remains static. It is a very dynamic process that is a challenge and fun.

Whining as an author about the overabundance of vampires, wizards and weirdos in popular fiction doesn’t get a book sold. As an author friend of mine once said, “What people like to read and purchase is a very democratic process.” Thus one needs to market.

As a writer you market the book and hope there is an audience out there. All of this requires money – yes money. So short of buttonholing people on the street in front of every local bar or grocery store and pleading, “Pleeease, buy my book!” you try different things that might produce results. Social media can be a gift in this way, but it costs too. Wearing a sandwich board down by Paul Bunyan might work, but how desperate is that?

I have googled my name on several occasions and note seven hits to the inquiry. One is a cardiovascular surgeon. It’s a good thing I’m not one too. Think of all the confusion that would bring! Of course there is the money.

Sometimes I write because I have to; not for the cash but because my head is full of stuff that jams up an already crowded landscape. I am old enough now that I don’t have to sell books. . . No, I get to. And that’s fun. Don’t look however for instructions on which scalpel to use.

The icebreaker is doomed. Global warming has arrived. No more are heroic efforts needed to free thousand foot freighters or stranded National Geographic tourist boats in Antarctica imperiled by stalking bergs and crushing ice floes. The days of ice augers and chisels on Lake Bemidji are numbered. Soon we will nurture palm trees on Lake Plantagenet and harvest pineapples on the streets of Cohasset. What a life! – – – But wait! The icebreaker has not died. Rest assured it will be resurrected in the next staff training, workshop or board meeting.

Icebreakers to relax social discourse emerged in the 17th century. Mark Twain also used the term in Life on the Mississippi. Since that time, they have become the stock in trade of many HR efforts at stimulating good feeling and cooperation. Seems like a beer or a little wine and hors d’oeuvres have fallen by the wayside.

We are social by nature. Why else would 99% of us live in communities? Yet it seems efforts to engender a false intimacy in an attempt to establish communication persist. What happened to a handshake, introduction and exchange of pleasantries?

Icebreakers fall on a continuum, from relatively benign to invasive, with dozens of books on Amazon for your enlightenment. The trust fall. Not a bad idea, unless you are to catch a 300 pounder. It might also be appropriate to have a block and tackle available for lifting their carcass off your expired self.

Then the cringe directive. “Turn to the person next to you and share a special moment from today.” Are you kidding? I don’t know if a flat tire, the surly adolescent I transported to school this morning or the fight about money over an early cup of coffee with the spouse count, but I guess I could “share” that. They were moments all right!

It is very hard to relate to another person what your shoes would say about you if you are of a literal mind. I know metaphor enriches our lives, but shoes speaking? I just want the darn things to fit well and provide a degree of comfort for Pete’s sake. Or the two truths and one lie spoken in one exercise. So do I say, “Your tie is cool,” or “I like your hair,” or tell them, “I can’t stand close to you because you smell?”

The problem with icebreakers is that they are awkward, put a reticent person on the defensive, and frequently have no purpose related to the reason for the meeting. Did these presenters ever think that the guy in the chair in the back row leaning against the wall half asleep is just there for the CEUs?

The risk in resisting these activities is that one might be branded a curmudgeon. Most people labeled this way have come by it honestly, having been ignored, not listened to or used by systems that really don’t care; the window dressing of soliciting input when decisions are already made.

So when icebreakers are called for in the waning days of an ice age as the earth warms, or discussion falters at the next workshop, wouldn’t it be more honest to leave one small cube in the bottom of a glass of Jameson 12 and munch a little brie on a cracker to oil the wheels of conversation?

More of Doug’s writings and intro to his book Woman River, can be seen at http://www.douglewandowski.com/